With certain languages Google Translate is appallingly bad. Ever tried to translate from Arabic into English? You’ll be hard pressed to ever understand what the English translation says let alone the Arabic original. I can imagine that the case is the same for quite a few other languages.

That said, there are some languages, such as French, where the translation is much more accurate. The translations can’t necessarily be trusted as being perfect, and often with languages where dialect or formal speech is an issue, Google Translate usually tends to get it wrong. The Google service still does come in pretty handy when translating emails, forum messages or even entire websites. But that’s not all that Google Translate is good for. You can push the limits of this tiny Google service and you’d be surprised at what you can get in return.

Beatbox

One of the most fun things to do with Google Translate to date has to be turning it into a beatbox. First posted on Reddit, the hidden feature that Google themselves probably never even imagined is making the internet rounds.

For the ‘Techno’ version, select Chinese to Chinese Simplified/Traditional translation.

Create Sound Effects

Once beatboxing was discovered, it wasn’t long before people were trying to find other interesting sounds you can get out of Google Translate.

To simulate the sound of a machine, an old car, or possibly even a chainsaw, paste the following text into Google translate and select Croatian to Croatian translation.

rrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrr

To simulate the sound of a helicopter, the following text has been suggested when selecting German to German translation.

kkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkkk

Order Indian Food

According to Google’s Demo Slam, a website inviting people to demonstrate how they put Google’s services to use in their lives, two American girls were able to call an Indian restaurant and place their order in Hindi. Whether or not the video is genuine is something we’ll never know, but with a little knowledge of the language, it might just be possible.

Translate Twitter Messages Automatically

With the use of the awesome Firefox add-on Greasemonkey, and a little userscript, you can have any foreign language tweets on Twitter automatically translated from whichever language they were originally written in. This is something that is actually currently being rolled out to all Twitter accounts, but until then, Firefox users can benefit from the free work around.

The script has its quirks, and sometimes translates English tweets if they contain a name that can be mistaken for a foreign language.

Chat with Friends in Any Language

Using the Google Talkchat bots you can have any text instantly translated when using Google Talk. There are two methods you can use – either add the bot to your friend’s list and simply type the text you want translated in a chat conversation with the bota.

Even more conveniently, you can add the bot to your conversation, to have all text translated immediately as you chat.

What creative uses for Google Translate can you come up with? Let us know in the comments.

do welsh and listen to this booooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffffff

do romanain to english and do 'iiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiiii' but instead of clicking the listen next to the box where you type in click the listen button underneath the box where you type in .... enjooooy

Nancy is a writer, photographer and editor, living in the DC area with her husband, their greyhound Ella, and Italian greyhound Oliver. Follow here on her personal blog , on Twitter , Pinterest, and Instagram